Truck Festival - Hill Farm, Steventon - 22-23/7/05
4/5
By: Thomas Hannan
As if downsized by the kind of magical shrinking ray gun one might find in a Simpsons 'Treehouse of Horror' episode, Truck contains all the things you'd expect to discover at your average major festival - bands of a calibre high enough to headline a stage at Reading or Leeds (The Futureheads, The Mystery Jets), the obligatory campsite catchphrase (this year - 'What's that coming over the hill?' / 'Ahh, looks like a monster to me, mate...') and drunken loons in large, lairy numbers. But somehow, apart from notes announcing coverage on BBC 6 Music scattered about the place, it manages to avoid some of the less desirable elements of the summer music gathering - corporate sponsorship's kept to a minimum, beers are sold at a reasonable price, and the stewards are the friendliest of people one could hope to be ordered around by. We've all been at a festival over the last few years and thought to ourselves 'never again'. Truck might change your mind about that.
The attention to detail is impeccable - it even pisses it down. Royally. There's just about time to pitch our tents, run in to the main arena and notice a few things before the heavens open. And what do we notice? Well, the whole thing's called Truck because the main stage actually is a truck, we could, if we wanted, purchase something called 'Vicar's Wine' for £1.50 a plastic glass and that the first band we encounter, The Madeleines (***), write some rather catchy, London scenester-like indie rock and roll for me, which girls dance to gleefully despite the skies looking ominous. Their wiry frames and luxurious fringes point to a band perhaps more concerned with image than sound, but that they've managed to find time to write a couple (not that many, mind) of winning melodies in amongst grooming sessions bodes well.
Then, a near apocalypse of precipitation ensues, and all but the amphibious among us head for the cover of nearby tents. This downfall works well for some of the smaller acts, who suddenly find themselves with a huge, captive audience, afraid to step outside for fear of not being able to actually see their way through the rain. It's in such conditions that we chance upon Tough Love (*). Maybe it's just the weather that's making everyone but the band miserable, but for a moment I really entertain the idea that their sub-Kasabian techno indie might in fact claim the accolade of worst band I've ever seen. Then, reflecting on the perverseness of the situation, I'm suddenly filled with cheer - the band, indeed are ridiculous. But so is everything about the day so far. I start to smile. I have to.
I also have the brace the rain and watch GoodBooks (****), for they, you see, are special. They're also charmingly full of thanks for each and every person who 'stands in the rain' (the line from 'Walk With Me' gaining an extra special relevance this afternoon) and watches them do their thing, some covered in umbrellas, some in hoods, but the vast majority just letting the water hit their now not so trendy haircuts and really embracing nature once again. They nail it. It's just a shame that the Gods decreed so few would be in attendance to see it happen. Dedicated bunch, mind.
Get Raincoat. Wear Raincoat. Stand and watch Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly (****) act as if there's nothing wrong with the weather at all. There is however something wrong with his laptop, so no squelchy beats or breaks to play Solitaire during this set. It's nice, in a way - it forces Sam to enthral the gathering, damp crowd with merely an acoustic guitar, the intermittent use of a trumpet player and his songs. True, we love him from the minute he comes on stage and immediately slags off Razorlight, but it carries on being great from there in - 'Call Me Ishmael', 'I Spy', a generous helping of others, each one sounds like it could whisk you off your feet and up in to the clouds.
The Barn stinks. It's a barn, a working barn, where animals usually live. Live, and crap. They crap a lot. This much is obvious. The good bands make you forget the smell of manure. Whilst watching Agent Blue(**), it was difficult to put it out of your mind, their heavy, butch take on indie not quite gripping enough to cause one to stop worrying about what it was you might be standing in. It sounds like the kind of music that would appeal to people who like beer. A lot. Now, don't get me wrong - I freakin' love beer. But, on a few occasions at Truck, I drank 'Vicar's Wine'. White wine. Agent Blue make music for people who would think less of me if they found this out.
SUNSHINE! Utterly ruddy beautiful, heavenly sunshine! I love everything and everything loves me! For half an hour or so, though my jeans remain sodden and my jumper will not be anything other than damp throughout the whole weekend, everything is beautiful. I entertain the idea that whilst Tough Love in the rain might have been the worst thing ever, Brakes (****), glistening in sunshine, might indeed be the best. I'm still of this opinion days afterwards - a British Sea Power / Electric Soft Parade supergroup whose work, controversial though it might be to say it, today surpasses that of either of those bands, this is really stunning. They're funny in that they've got short political bursts of vitriol like 'Cheney' and 'Pick up the Phone' which last about ten seconds and 'All Night Disco Party', which becomes something of a pagan sun worshipping anthem today, but also deadly serious, delicate songwriters, as proven with something as charming as 'I Can't Stand To Stand Beside You'. Right then, they were the best band ever.
: ( (***), or Colon Open Bracket if you want to attempt saying it out loud, are either the greatest or worst thing ever. It's certainly bloody entertaining, regardless of me not being able to figure out whether I want to shake their hands or break their legs. There's a woman with a keyboard thrown over her shoulder, who might not actually be doing anything, a drummer hammering at a kit over some Nintendo beats that appear from a laptop, and the very personification of Emo shouting incomprehensible things over the top of it. Silly music. Maybe it's incredible. Maybe it's terrible. I don't even want to decide. Go to see them.
Compared to the awesome Battles (*****), it's certainly more colon than open bracket. Lucky man, I am - this is the second time I've seen this lot this week, the fourth time in total, and certainly the best time of the lot. Their prog-funk, dance-punk, math-boogie, stupidgenre-cum-stupidgenre experiments work wonders here, completely making me lose track of the fact that I really should be concentrating on where I'm stepping and what I'm stepping in as I just dance about in the stuff with hundreds of other revellers. It's almost got the feel of an illegal rave, except the music is incredible rather than just a soundtrack to chemically induced mindsets. Want to hear something stupid? I described them as 'the middle ground between Shellac and Fatboy Slim' and some lad thought I'd nailed it, rather than that I was just talking nonsense. Which I was.
Battles - bloody amazing.
Winnebago Deal (****) are pretty much the polar opposite of Battles in terms of subtlety, but they're just as enthralling. Bastardised punk, sludge metal if it were played at breakneck speed, a cracking good laugh - it's all these things. The day's first mosh pit happens and a few hundred ear drums burst as we witness the loudest band of our lives. As the set commences, I note that I want to own the drummer's Melvins T Shirt. As it ends, the thing now drenched with armpit juices, I shy away from asking for it, and instead I nurse the bruises to both my arms and my ears after the most electrifying, powerful, gigantic bunch of nonsense we'll see all weekend, and probably for a long time after that also.
Predictably it doesn't take much for Truck Records alumnus MC Lars (***) to have the Steventon faithful eating out of the palm of his hand - especially now that he's expanded on his likeable laptop rap by bringing in a full band to give his live shows that extra bit of bite. Now that the samples (everything from 'The Passenger' to 'Moving' by Supergrass) are played by the band, Lars' music veers dangerously close to the disturbing world of rap-rock, but somehow the frontman's geeky zeal helps retain the sense of fun that's become his trademark. Highlights included a crushing (yet still tongue-in-cheek) version of 'Signing Emo' which inspired a mass finger-pointing sing-a-long amongst the hair-conscious crowd, and 'Ahab', Lars' ingenious hip-hop retelling of Moby Dick. Annoyingly a computer hiccup put paid to an airing of 'iGeneration' which would surely have torn the corrugated roof clean off the barn, but Lars still confirmed himself as an unequivocal Truck institution (review by Chris Pratt).
OK, so I should adore Forward Russia (***) - I find naming all their songs after numbers really pretty funny rather than annoying, they seem to love At The Drive In as much as I do, and amongst all the pretty gimmicks there are one or two tunes. But the rest of it, especially with the wind blowing across the stage today, is an indistinguishable mess, and starts to grate. We're informed that if we're not 'feeling it', good buddies Redjetson are playing in the tent over the field. Funny though it seems, we take the band's advice, and stop watching their set.
Redjetson (***) then, after that little announcement, seem to have the smallest tent on the site that doesn't actually have people sleeping in it completely jammed. It makes for an intimate treat, their brooding, epic guitar soundscapes a welcome respite from all that niggly shouting and jumping around we were watching a few metres away. People start to really feel it. But the problem with Redjetson at the moment is that once that reaction is prompted in those watching them by their greatest tracks, the rest have a sort of sleepy feeling that becomes difficult to snap out of. People drift.
Some do this mentally, dozing away as the vitality of Redjetson's set seems to slip, others physically, traipsing to the other side of the farm to see Simon Amstel (****) make us laugh. And he does - many people's highlight of the entire weekend, his is a clever, witty set full of wry put downs and self deprecation. If this were a comedy website, we'd wax lyrical about particular gags, stage presence, whether he's the saviour of British comedy now everybody's finally latched on to the fact that Little Britain really blows, but it's not, it's a music website. Instead, we'll tell you a little about Anat Ben David's (**) solo set, a largely naked woman running around a stage pulling the most macho rock star of poses for a renowned radical feminist, she clicks a laptop, prompting it to produce some uninspired, twee electro whilsta conservatively dressed young lady on drums looks as embarrassed to be part of it as we are to watch it. Perhaps with her band, Chicks on Speed, tomorrow, she'll have a little more success.
Time for someone to headline this whole shebang. The Futureheads(***) do so, and really rather well they do it too, but though their choice of set list is perfect for the festival (full of hits, basically - loads of the buggers), it does make you wonder about what state the band are in. Bar a few obvious ones ('Skip To The End', 'Worry About It Later' - the current and past singles, basically) and candidates for future release (the brilliant 'Burnt', 'Fallout', 'Cope'), it's largely devoid of new album material. Now, this strikes me as odd, because I'm one of the few people in the country who deems 'News & Tributes' to be a better record than their superlative, eponymous debut. Perhaps with it being guitarist Ross's birthday and a party atmosphere infecting every blade of grass in the Truck fields, they chose to just let the crowd enjoy the songs they knew (sheesh, they start with 'Decent Days and Nights', enforce a choreographed singalong for 'Hounds of Love' - they're playing us, alright!) rather than enforce unfamiliar ones upon such a hyped up audience. Or, maybe, worryingly, they don't think that much of that new LP after all. But I do, lads. I do.
This prematurely old twenty something got an early night last night, like a bloody misery guts, but on reflection it was a good thing, as many more bands were caught this Sunday than were on the Saturday because of this new found energy I seemed to gain from my slumber. It started as if it was going to follow the lead of the previous day - basically, by tipping it down. Again. Then clearing, and the sunshine making mediocre bands seem not so bad after all. Amberstate(**) for example. All in one catsuits, ageing men, electro-jazz that sounds like it would be more appropriately be the product of a tongue in cheek rendition by Vince Noir on The Mighty Boosh. But millions of miles away, a big ball of gas burns, shining on to this lot, and makes them seem rather cute.
The Keyboard Choir(***) are all weather fun - basically four arty types on various keys and synthesisers attempting to harmonise their efforts with mild, discordant success (and banging beats, la) whilst their mates, dressed in entertainingly shoddy homemade robot costumes, dance like idiots to their efforts. Grand stuff. Then, bizarrely similar in aesthetic (they both make hazy, woozy, hippy sounds, basically), we make the short trip to see The Early Years(**) entertain a seated tent full of Truckers with huge swathes of slow guitar noise, melodic but devoid of pace, entertaining as it goes but somewhat limited in that its purpose seems to be to just suck the fun out of the tent. If that is its rationale however, it worked brilliantly.
On to recent Poptones signings The Dodgems (**) in The Barn, and where we thought Battles might have cleaned the place up, the kind of slightly tired, wholly uninspiring but charmingly earnest indie pop delivered by this sprightly bunch really reminds you where it is you're currently standing. That's right - in shit. Unlike Battles' renovation of the venue, this lot are just one odour covering up another. It's no Febreeze, that's for sure, and nor are The Dodgems the worst band one will ever see. They're just sadly not that great.
Emmy The Great (****) is though - it's in the name. She's marvellous, in fact, her name an understatement of her powers. She looks like if we clap too loudly the resulting gusts of air might cause her to topple over, but her songs are anything but fragile. They're subtle, that's for sure, and really rather clever, but anything other than flimsy - the way she leans in to the microphone and scowls before she delivers most of her words is actually in a way rather intimidating. Thank gawd the songs are so delightful, then. Boosted by a grand appearance from Jeremy Warmsley on keys, percussion and vocals (though he later tells us he sang awfully, the bloody perfectionist), it's the first really large crowd seen in the acoustic tent all weekend. Not the last, mind...
We'll return to there later. First, Lightyear. Now mock me all you want, but this was superb. I know ska punk is about as fashionable as paedophilia right now, but four years ago when these guys were at their peak, you'd have struggled to see a better live act anywhere on the globe. Their second record 'Chris Gentlemen's Hairdresser & Railway Bookshop' meant more to most of the kids who regularly went and gave their all at shows who I knew than anything they'd learn at school. It was the ska punk 'OK Computer', if there could ever be such a thing. They split up three years ago. They got back together for two weeks. They disband again in a week's time. If you're near them, regardless of what musical background you come from or what prejudices about people with trumpets you've picked up along the way, make sure you're in their presence at least once. You'll see arses, people up ladders, men dressed as horses, choreographed stick dance routines and grown men running 'round like toddlers with hyperactivity disorders. You'll hear the greatest ska band known to man.
Enough of, y'know, laughing and enjoying ourselves frivolously - let's get serious. Let's get heavy. Let us all Rock of Travolta(***) (great name, eh?) for a while, folding our fingers in to horns whilst flying V shaped guitars and cellos blast out pompous, highly entertaining if slightly inconsequential riff after riff. No singing, oh no, no time for that - there's another riff mere seconds away. It'll sound a lot like the last one, but this is just what Rock of Travolta do - judge them on whether they do that well, rather than assessing the point of their existence. And they do it well, indeed, though if someone mentioned the word 'variety' to them, you expect to be confronted with a very blank face. The crowd? They're odd - all, each and every one of them, is sat down. Enjoying it, but not enough to stand up - that is, apart from the one little kid to my left, too young to hold a pencil but already bashing the living daylights out of a toy guitar, who is absolutely loving it.
Give thanks for the fact that said little boy is being exposed to something as silly but paradoxically intelligent as Rock of Travolta as his first taste of what an electric guitar can do and not My Awesome Compilation (**) in the barn, who deliver 'emotional hardcore' (looks sillier every time you read it, no?) so devoid of anything 'hard' or worthy of the expression 'cor!' that I get down on my knees and beg that I might become young, American and completely uninitiated with regards all other kinds of music so that I might find this as enjoyable as the young pretty people at the front do. They look like they don't have a care in the world.
Thomas Truax (*****), back in that Acoustic Tent I mentioned to you earlier, isn't just great in comparison to that, he's superb in comparison to the real masters of all this solo singer songwriter nonsense - y'know, the ones who it actually seems insulting to attach the label 'singer songwriter' to. Tom Waits, Captain Beefheart, Nick Cave, they all spring to mind. Then the mind clears, and I'm watching a wiry man turn on something called Sister Spinster, a homemade drum machine that resembles the inside workings of an old chronometer, attach another similar contraption to his back, tap and whisper in to a horn to create the otherworldly 'Prove It To My Daughter' and, from time to time, play songs on a guitar. After all these self constructed instruments have been utilised, picking up an acoustic might seem a little boring, that is, if he wasn't making hugely reverb laden, distorted noise resonate out from it when he's plugged it in, or running about the seated crowd yelling songs about his native 'Wow Town' (which I don't think actually exists, although if it does I'm moving there) when he's taken it away from the electricity supply. I've now heard music like I've never heard before. That's one of the most special things you can witness.
I thought Chicks on Speed (**) would please me more than the peculiar Anat Ben David's solo set yesterday, but they let me down, along with many many others. Adored by their contemporaries (who are clever chaps - Le Tigre, The Gossip, any girl with a brain), today a streamlined CoS featuring only half of their normal line up don't really let us in to exactly why it is they're so lauded. Of course, taking an age to come on and getting to see the contents of Anat's laptop projected mistakenly on the a big screen beforehand (her wallpaper was awful, and she uses BitTorrent, by the way) takes something away from the rock and roll-ness of it all, but crucially, once they finally did get going, there just didn't seem to be any tunes.
Buck 65 (**) isn't a stand up comedian. He's one of the greatest rappers and hip hop pioneers of all time, and between his songs, when seen in the kind of amplified musical set many will witness in The Barn later on, he can spin quite a yarn. What he does in the Performance tent is a mildly shambolic, chaotic run through some childhood memories and anecdotes. Sure, we love his voice - that raspy, low growl gets us every time - but these tales, Buck, weren't particularly engaging. Sorry, dude.
Seth Lakeman (***) - now there's an example of what a Mercury nomination can do for you. Midway up the bill on the main stage, his brand of Dartmoor folk is actually as pleasant as his enjoyment of the whole situation is blatant. We're like this, us lot from Devon - if anyone pays us attention it feels like such personal vindication we just won't stop grinning. He plays the ones we might just know 'Lady of The Sea', 'Kitty Jay' (inspired by a spooky Dartmoor story), and we clap politely, sitting down in the sunshine. Actually, maybe that's it - the sunshine. I ponder for a minute whether this would be any good at all if it were tipping it down. Can it transcend weather? Hmm... not so sure.
I had a bit of a grumble earlier about My Awesome Compilation, 'emo' and the like. I kind of want to stick up for emo as what it was when I first heard the word - Fugazi and The Dismemberment Plan - but apart from those two bands who I hold close to my heart, the scene was never mine to defend. Whosever it was, it's been lost to the all powerful chorus. And if it has to be that way, you can at least have the decency to do it like Irishmen Jetplane Landing(***) - basically, just make sure your choruses are totally killer (dude). The rest of it's rather endearing too, jumping around uncomfortably, rocking purposefully, grooving almost erotically, it rightly gains a favourable reaction. Even Thomas Truax claps.
Right, we're trying not to dwell on Transgressive records artists too much as it might utterly reek of nepotism (what with the boys being our sister label and all), but we'll briefly say that The Young Knives were bloody fantastic. Seeing as our professional involvement with Regina Spektor (****) however has now come to an amicable end, we are permitted to rave about how special a show she delivered (the same reason that yesterday we suggested that GoodBooks are the best young band in Britain - y'get me? Nothing to do with us any more...). Utterly convinced we were that she would sit down on stage in The Barn and complain about how much the gaff smelt whilst drunken idiots talked over the acapella 'My Man' she's taken to starting with, instead she tells us how good it feels to be a city girl romping around a farm, and everyone falls deathly, silently, in love. Still she refuses to actually plug anything - 'Begin to Hope', her new record, is hardly mined, but that's always been the case - new songs are written every day, old ones rediscovered and dusted off regardless of what time period they're from. Whilst her new LP might see her branch out in to dealing with things as vulgar as drums, guitars and heavy production, live she's even more charming than ever, bringing favourites such as 'Us', 'The Ghost of Corporate Future' and 'The Flowers' to the table to dine with new efforts in their original form - just her, that voice, and a piano. Which is all she's ever needed to sound utterly perfect.
Mystery Jets (****), despite them being Transgressive old boys, because they're headlining, they're unique, and watching them release their music out into a sunset as quaint as this one really was a picture. They're a great choice of headliner as their quirkiness matches Truck's inability to play by the big boys' rules masterfully. Not only that, but it's only in front of a large audience that one realises what songs like 'Zoo Time', 'You Can't Fool Me Dennis' and 'Alas Agnes' especially were really made for - to be enjoyed by thousands, communally, in shared joy. Which is exactly what happened.
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